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Saruman, the White Hand

· Legendary Creature — Avatar Wizard · Tales of Middle-earth Commander (LTC)

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Times Brought

336

Decks Running

155

In Decks

—

Decklist Inclusion

—

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Showing 1v1 (duel) data only. 1v1 is a different format from multiplayer Commander, so these numbers are not comparable.

Card text

Saruman, the White Hand

Legendary Creature — Avatar Wizard

Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, amass Orcs X, where X is that spell's mana value. (Put X +1/+1 counters on an Army you control. It's also an Orc. If you don't control an Army, create a 0/0 black Orc Army creature token first.) Goblins and Orcs you control have ward {2}

2 / 5

Tales of Middle-earth Commander (LTC) · Mythic · Illustrated by Leonardo Borazio

Final zone distribution

93 instances

43.0%

Battlefield

33.3%

Graveyard

5.4%

Exile

18.3%

Hand

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The "good card" funnel

336 brought · 144 players

Brought to game

336

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

Once cast, 68% of this card is still on the battlefield at game end. This reflects how often it survives removal, not just whether it's a permanent.

≥ -5.0pp

Players who cast this card win 23% of the time (n=47) , vs 21% when it never left the library (n=174).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 21% (n=21).

Read this as correlation, not as the card's contribution. Casting a card means you lived long enough to cast it, so this gap widens with mana value across every card we track.

Observed gap +2.9pp; 95% confidence interval -5.0pp to +10.8pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=97

20%

19%

30%

T6-9

T10+

Median 5 P25 4 · P75 7 · max 16

On curve 43% (19 / 97 cast on T4) Cast same turn as drawn 40%

Frequently Asked

Why isn't there more data on this card?

Playgroup Live collects per-card gameplay data from real Commander games. Play counts appear once a card reaches 100 tracked games, and the full charts need a sample of at least 25 observed games that is not dominated by a single pilot. Until this card clears those bars you're seeing only the basic counts. Stats refresh nightly.

How is Playgroup Live card data collected?

Players using Playgroup Live import their decklists before a game and log card actions as they play. Each cast, zone change, and resolution is recorded as a real game event. Stats on this site are computed from those events, not from decklist scrapes or theorycrafting. Playgroup has recorded 680,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live subset of that corpus.